Joel On The Road

Here is the speech I gave on Saturday, Feb. 16 at the Oakwood Common Senior Residence in Dearborn on “The Future of Newspapers”:

There are three themes to my talk this afternoon.

First, although I’ve made my living as a journalist for 30 years, I was trained to be a historian. Historians by their nature and education don’t like making predictions, so please don’t ask me to predict the future of newspapers.

Second, I want to share with you my belief that the future of newspapers is bright.

And my third theme is this: Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers.

Oh yes, please don’t ask me to predict the future.

I’ve written this talk out, but I’m not reading it. If I get excited about some point and forget to mention something else, you can read the full text on my blog. It’s joelontheroad.com.

Now wait a minute — did I just say “the future of newspapers is bright”?

What am I thinking of?

Nobody in his or her right mind thinks newspapers have a prayer of surviving the onslaught of the Internet.

I just read in the New York Times that adjusted for inflation, ad and circulation revenue from print and online in 2007 were down 20 percent from seven years ago.But hold on here — who is trumpeting all this doom and gloom?

Oh sure, you may hear it on radio or see it on TV, but those are derivative, secondary sources.

Who’s blowing all those dark clouds at newspapers?

Why, it’s the newspapers themselves who are sounding their own death knell.

Here, look at this — in my hand I’m holding the business section of the New York Times for Thursday, February 7.

Look at the headline, center top of the first page, remember, of the business section of the New York Times.

“Paper Cuts”

“Shrinking Advertising And Falling Profits”

The New York Times!

Who am I to argue with such an august source of news?

Who am I to say the future of newspapers is bright, when the New York Times and every other news outlet says just the opposite?

When the share prices of news organizations seem headed down, down, down?
Well, you might say, but what kind of newspaper are you talking about? Paper newspapers or Internet newspapers?

If the discussion is solely about Internet newspapers, then the negative seers are correct. But I am talking about PAPER newspapers.

I am saying that the future of PAPER newspapers is bright.

At this point in the history of newspapers, it’s hard to separate the two.

I am definitely talking traditonal ink-rubbing-on-the-fingers old paper papers.

And I’m going to tell you that whether it’s the New York Times or the Detroit Free Press or the Metro Times, newspapers have a credibility problem when it comes to this topic. I’m not saying they are deliberately lying to you. I can’t really speak about motivation. Maybe they are fooling themselves. One thing I learned early on about journalism is that journalists are great copy cats. They steal ideas without pity and without remorse. They are quite capable of putting out lies and then with the power of many repeating voices, amplifying them. Some papers are called “mirror” for a reason.

Great. Now, who am I to make such heavy accusations? What is my expertise? Until recently, I was a reporter. A beat reporter. Believe me, towards the end, when I was not only reporting and writing, but taking pictures and learning to edit audio, all in the same 37 and one half-hour work week, I was starting to feel real, real beat.

What I said earlier is true. I’m a historian. I never studied journalism formally. I learned by doing. But I never sat down in an academic institution and studied how to gather news or write news copy. So who am I to talk about the future of newspapers?

Well, not having formally studied the topic, it’s possible that I might see things somewhat differently. I do believe that what we are talking about is a very simple thing: How to persuade people to buy newspapers and how to persuade those people and maybe others as well to purchase advertising in papers. Paper or electronic, it doesn’t matter. Unless we’re being subsidized by some rich foundation, we need to sell papers as the vehicle for the ads that we also sell, and together, that is what ensures that paychecks don’t bounce.

I know a little something about this. A long time ago, I was editor of a very, very small circulation weekly newspaper. It was called the Journal Era and it circulated with a very weak pulse to begin with in Berrien Springs and Eau Claire, two towns in southwestern Michigan. In 1979, I became editor of the Journal Era. That meant that I reported and wrote all the news, wrote editorials, an occasional column, features; I took the photos and developed the film, printed the negatives, laid out the pages, answered the phone, sold an occasional ad and watched the publishers cull deadwood. What I mean by deadwood is that they were slowly figuring out which subscribers had not paid and were on the mailing list simply to puff up the circulation figures for the former owner so he could defraud the new owners when he sold the paper to them. Gradually, the new publishers discovered that the paper did not have the 2,000 paid subscribers the old owner had touted. It’s a good thing we didn’t know at the outset that only 700 people thought enough of our paper to pay for it.

There’s a saying in the business, “Newspaper people brag about their drinking and lie about their circulation.”

In little over a year, we had pumped the numbers up to a real 2000 paid subscribers. No more deadwood. We had some things going for us. First, we lacked credibility because the former owner had squandered it. This was good. It gave us contrast against the past. As we struggled to regain what the previous owner had frittered away, people slowly realized we were different. We created our own identity. The contrast was dramatic. People came to trust us. Credibility. Very important. Another thing we had going. We were curious. If it seemed interesting to us, we would find out about it and write about it. No matter how goofball the topic. None of us were journalists, so we didn’t know what was the norm for news. We investigated and broke stories that made life uncomfortable for some people in power. We alienated neighbors and big wigs who benefited from secrecy. But most readers saw us as champions of the little person. We had flexibility. We could try something one week, see if it sold papers. If it didn’t, we could stop it pronto, no recriminations, no bad performance evaluations.

From 700 to 2000 – that’s a 285 percent increase. Pretty heady. I felt like a real dragon slayer. Now around that time in Detroit, in 1981, the paid daily circulation of the Detroit Free Press was said to be 622,129. I joined the Free Press as a reporter in 1984. I had great ideas about how I could make a difference. Detroit – wow! This was the Great Newspaper War. I sent a memo to the executive editor, Dave Lawrence, outlining my plan for printing the Free Press on the presses of out-state dailies and really eclipsing our arch rival, the Detroit News. I quoted Ulysses Grant on the art of war. Find the enemy, hit him fast and hard and move on. There was bitter rivalry between the News and Free Press in those days. I worked hard to break hot stories. It was not as easy as it was at the weekly to get stories in the paper, though. It was weird. It was supposed to be war, but it seemed like we pulled our punches. There were committees of editors who could blunt a story or stop it entirely.

By 2007, Free Press circulation was 318,000. That’s a decline of 49 percent from 1981. Man, I feel like a failure. I’m kidding, of course. Back in 1984, I got my audience with the big boss. Dave Lawrence listened politely and explained why each of my ideas would not work. Notice, however, that out-state dailies are now printing the Chicago Tribune and New York Times. What if the Free Press had done that back in the eighties? Little did I know that I was tilting against culture. At the Free Press, the state edition was considered a throwaway, of no interest to advertisers. But think of the circulation they could have built. My plan also called for bureaus in towns like Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids. Oh well. There’s not much one person can do as we hear that those kinds of declines are being reflected across the country.

Here’s someething for you to think about, given that most or maybe all of you live in Dearborn. You have something in common with the out-state people. You are throwaways, too, as far as the Detroit dailies are concerned. It’s sort of like Orwell’s “Animal Farm” — some communities are more equal than others. Dearborn is so equal that it lost its Community Free Press weekly news edition. That was a section of the paper devoted exclusively to news about Dearborn and Dearborn Heights. Well, when the Detroit Media Partnership fine-tuned the CFPs, they decided to drop the edition that circulated here. Why? Not enough advertising. So when I was working on the CFPs and heard about something interesting at Henry Ford Community College or the University of Michigan-Dearborn, I couldn’t write about it unless I could find some Downriver angle. Maybe a student from Trenton or Lincoln Park. A student from Dearborn wouldn’t be enough. And the story wouldn’t run in Dearborn anyway. Yes, the dailies discriminate against some towns and favor others.

Now, I ask you, how can you scream about declining circulation if you are deliberately excluding customers from your coverage?

I’m trained as a historian, not as a journalist. So I am loath to predict the future. But I believe that if we look at the past, we can learn some important lessons that may help us understand where we are headed. If we ask the right questions.There is too much generalizing about the future of newspapers. Their general demise is prematurely predicted. The general does not explain the particular, nor does the particular necessarily explain the general. If newspapers are all losing readers, how is it that the Philadelphia Inquirer is increasing or holding steady?

The New York Times article mentions Phillie in the midst of all the glum speculation. Mentions it in passing. Doesn’t explain how the Inquirer, owned by a non-newspaper person, is bucking the downward circulation trend. Doesn’t think it imprtant enough. One newspaper actually increasing its circulation and the Times mentions it in passing? See what I mean — do they care? Or do they have a collective death wish?

Certainly, the experience in Detroit is interesting. In that span of time between 1981 and 2007, we have seen major disruptions. Nothing to do with the Internet. First, there was the Joint Operating Agreement in 1989. Gannett at the News and Knight-Ridder at the Free Press actually had an amazing thing – 40 percent of readers took both papers. And the companies wanted to get rid of the duplicate readers. Circulation declined after the JOA and directly because of the monopoly. Deliberate self-sabotage and incompetent implemention drove readers away. Did I say self-inflicted injury? Just wait. In 1995, the companies provoked a strike. Circulation went down by roughly a third and stayed that way. Self-inflicted. I still find people who refuse after nearly 12 years to re-start the Free Press. Recently, circulation at the Free Press and News has plummeted. The Free Press went from 342,000 readers in January 2006 to 318,000 in January 2007, an eight percent decline. The Detroit News went from 217,000 to 193,000 in the same period, an 11 percent drop. One year!

The JOA and the strike carved huge numbers of readers away. So it would seem. But we have to question everything. Remember that deadwood I mentioned at the Journal Era? When I came to the Free Press in 1984, I was shocked to see the Detroit News telling advertisers it was selling 1,000 copies a day in Berrien County. I knew that was a lie. I used to string for the News, and I couldn’t buy the paper in Berrien Springs. I had to drive to Benton Harbor, where it was sold at one newsstand only. We heard tales of whole semi-loads of the News being dumped daily, of huge quantities of the News being found in ditches. I was sure they were lying about their numbers. I was outraged. In my Ulysses Grant memo to Dave Lawrence, I urged the executive editor to investigate the fraud at the News. A pal at the Free Press laughed at me. He predicted nothing would be done because, he claimed, the Free Press was fudging its numbers, too. This was the Great Newspaper War, remember. Think about this: In 1981, both Detroit papers were claiming a combined circulation on Sunday of more than 1.5 million copies. Today, the lone Sunday paper, the Free Press, claims 631,000 subscribers. A 58 percent loss. Wow. But is it possible that the 1981 figure is bogus? And if those earlier numbers were inflated, that means the decline in circulation now being lamented was not nearly as dramatic. What if the baseline for our grief over newspapers’ demise turned out to be a mirage? It’s hard to talk about the future if we’re glimpsing the past through a thicket of misconceptions, misinformation and lies.

Nowadays, it seems that the big downward driving factor for circulation is the Internet. Right? Nobody talks about JOAs or strikes or mendacious circulation claims.

I wonder. In my 23 years at the Free Press, I listened to editors lecture us in meeting after meeting on how important it is for us to somehow attract young readers. I know young readers. I have two sons, ages 24 and 27. We don’t have to go after them. They read newspapers. But they don’t subscribe to them. They read them online. Free.

Are newspapers wasting time trying to attract readers they don’t have, never will have or already have on the free Internet while shortchanging readers who are actually paying for the paper? I hear from middle-aged and older people now that they are freeloading online, too. Nobody is forcing newspapers to ramp up the money-losing Internet while undercutting the for-pay product. Let’s not blame the Internet.

Is something else going on? Newspapers are putting more and more effort and time into online reports. But they’re having a hard time selling ads online. Nationwide, online advertising accounts for only 5 percent of newspaper ad revenues.

The print papers still produce 95 percent of the revenue, yet readers of the print paper are being shortchanged by increasingly smaller news holes and stories that are hastily reported. I think readers know this. Could a decline in quality explain why people are canceling subscriptions? If so, the fault can’t be the Internet. Once again, self-inflicted harm.

I actually have hope for the future of newspapers. Journalists mostly lack originality. They follow the leader. If the decline is more apparent than real, they are not likely to see it unless somebody at a bigger paper begins to say it. Still, there is a breaking from the ranks. Keep your eyes on the papers that are privately owned. Wall Street has a hand in many of the decisions that are ruining the quality of our news. Some newspaper owners seem to realize this and are taking their papers private. Examples are the Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. We see new people owning papers. They apparently see that newspapers are able to return 15 to 20 percent on their investment where supermarket chains are lucky to yield 5 percent. To them, the papers look like a good investment.

The future of newspapers, whether paper or digital, may well lie with those owners who are able to fine-tune their operations without bullying from Wall Street and institutional investors. The future of newspapers may be with those editors and publishers who can think independently, separate their decision-making from the pack mentality and find flexibility to experiment and change quickly.

One thing is sure. If newspapers are to survive, whether paper or digital, they need to find more good old-fashioned credibility, curiosity and courage. Forget pandering to age groups or other special interests. Good stories appeal to everyone. If they don’t, people will see no reason to pay for them.

Do I think newspapers might disappear? Yes, I do. I think it possible that the present papers, like the Free Press and News, might close. Right now, there apparently are no buyers for papers. But they could become real bargains. In the past year, roughly, I’ve watched McClatchy, which bought Knight-Ridder, which owned the Free Press, go from share prices in the $40-plus range to about $10. I’m happy to say I got out in the thirties, but if those prices go down much more, somebody, I’m sure, will see the newspapers as a bargain that can’t be beat.

But what if nobody bought the papers? What if they simply stopped printing?

I believe there will always be a need for a tactile vehicle of news, by which I mean a paper paper. My friend Greg Rokicak six years ago started the Downriver Review. It’s a paper paper. Greg works hard to sell ads. He gives the paper away. He tells me he sees no sign that the Detroit dailies are even trying to sell ads in southern Wayne County. But Greg is selling ads and his paper is making money. It supports one person — him.

I didn’t see him mentioned in that New York Times story. But I believe newspapers will survive. One thing I left out in the beginning. I said, “the future of newspapers is bright.” I didn’t say the future is bright for the papers we have now. If they have a death wish and finally close up, too bad. But they won’t be missed for long. There are people like my friend Greg waiting to fill the void, and in fact Greg is already doing it.